Israel Seizes Hidden Weapons

January 5, 2002|By Tracy Wilkinson Foreign Correspondent

JERUSALEM — Breaking what it described as a major smuggling operation, the Israeli military said on Friday it had intercepted a ship in the Red Sea carrying 50 tons of advanced weaponry destined for the Palestinian Authority.

The ship was owned by the Palestinian Authority, and its captain and several members of the crew were officers in the Palestinian naval police force, Israeli military officials said. Had the arsenal reached the Palestinians, it would have substantially increased Palestinian firepower.

Israel announced the capture in a news conference in Tel Aviv at the same moment that U.S. Middle East envoy Gen. Anthony Zinni was meeting with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat in his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Spokesmen for Arafat denied knowledge of the arms shipment, the largest of several that Israel claims to have intercepted or detected in the 15 months of escalated Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Most of the weapons apparently came from Iran and were contained in 83 crates packed onto the vessel in a watertight container that could be submerged for a long period for later retrieval, Israeli officials said.

Mofaz said if the weapons had reached the Palestinians, "it could have dramatically raised the threat faced by Israeli civilians and soldiers, and significantly widened the scale of terrorist attacks."

Anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, especially, could reduce the enormous advantage that Israeli gunships and armor have over Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Mofaz said the smuggling attempt violated interim peace deals that set limits on the type and number of weapons in the Palestinian Authority arsenal. Most of the weapons on the ship are forbidden to the Palestinians under the existing agreements.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Arafat should take immediate steps to prevent future attempts to bring weapons into the territories.

Boucher told a daily briefing that Zinni brought up the Israeli allegation at a meeting with Arafat on Friday. "[Zinni] expressed our strong condemnation of any attempts to escalate the conflict in the region by militant groups or others," he said.

Under cover of darkness early on Thursday, Israeli naval commandos backed by aircraft boarded the Karine A about 300 miles from Israeli shores in international waters of the Red Sea. The vessel was headed north, but Israeli authorities didn't reveal its port of departure or exact destination.

The crew did not resist and fired no shots, Mofaz said. No casualties were reported.

Arafat spokesman Nabil abu Rudaineh, following the meeting with Zinni, said the Palestinian Authority had "absolutely nothing to do with, nor knowledge of" the arms shipment. He accused Israel of a "propaganda ploy" aimed at undermining Zinni's mission, which is to broker a lasting cease-fire and move Israelis and Palestinians toward broader peace talks.